Interior of a Church, Inspired by the Antwerp Cathedral

Neefs signed this panel and dated it 1644 on a pillar at the left. The nave behind is inspired by Antwerp Cathedral, the church he painted again and again, though he treated its architecture freely here. The Louvre is less certain about some of the people. Its catalogue suggests that the figures in the centre of the foreground, the group of men talking with a dog beside them, may have been added later, perhaps in the 18th century. The catalogue points to a comparable case in Paris, a church interior shown at the Salon of 1793 that was painted by Pierre-Joseph Lafontaine with figures by Jean-Louis Demarne. Nobody recorded where this panel came from before it reached the Louvre, where it was already listed in the early 19th century.